LONDON, June 26 (Reuters) - Global energy demand rose 1% last year and record renewables growth did nothing to shift the dominance of fossil fuels, which still accounted for 82% of supply, the industry’s Statistical Review of World Energy report said on Monday.
Last year was marked by turmoil in the energy markets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which helped to boost gas and coal prices to record levels in Europe and Asia.
The stubborn lead of oil, gas and coal products in covering most energy demand cemented itself in 2022 despite the largest ever increase in renewables capacity at a combined 266 gigawatts, with solar leading wind power growth, the report said.
“Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,” said the president of the UK-based global industry body Energy Institute, Juliet Davenport.
“We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.”
It’s a bit unsettling tbh
To put a positive spin on it, global demand grew by 1%, and renewables filled that gap by increasing their share of the total by that amount.
One thing to pay close attention to with solar is that nameplate capacity is not actual capacity by far. So you build a 1GW solar plant and think you can replace 1GW of coal, but sometimes you can replace 1GW, other times you can replace 250MW, sometimes you can replace 0W.
Doesn’t mean it’s not good to grow green energy, but it’s easy to get sold a bill of goods.
Yup, and you still need something dispatchable like gas to back it up anyway.
